No Walk in the Park

Title: No Walk in the Park

This is no walk in the park and I don’t anticipate it will ever be. I separated my life from him on paper but it takes so much longer to unlearn survival tactics that kept me afloat all those years. I sometimes look at you and see him for reasons that may be difficult to explain. You’ve done nothing wrong but being of the same species often makes you guilty by association. I have callouses in places they shouldn’t exist and wounds not yet scabbed over. My heart beats in hyper vigilant mode expecting the worst, assuming the worst, prepared for the worst, but not. I offer myself up to you, but hesitantly so. I want this to work and everything you’ve shown me says this is different, but forgive my broken path and the shattered glass I’ve stashed and carried here to you. I lash out and cut you down with words, but I swear I mean you no harm. I’m just holding on and letting go and never imagined it’d be this hard. And you’ve apologized so many times for things that were my fault. I overreact and then blame how I feel on your efforts to be what I need. I shut you out and walk away til I’m no longer in my feelings. I come home as if nothings happened to open arms that never hold a thing against me. And you don’t deserve to pay a bill run up by someone you don’t even know. But you swipe without hesitation every single chance you get just to show me how committed you are to never letting go. I often wish I’d found you first, but I don’t think I would have appreciated you. At least not the way I now do. I forget sometimes it’s not all about me and I try to love you, I do. I know being with me is no walk in the park, but I trust it’s a walk you’re committed to.